We have been making Gumbo for a few years and it is by far everyone’s favorite in our family. Gumbo is by no means any low fat diet food but I love it. It also contains flour and vegetable oils, two ingredients I usually don’t cook with. I don’t usually eat grains because it makes me feel bad and I’m trying to stay away from vegetable oils. However, I believe in the 80/20 rule, which means I can enjoy some of my favorite meals 20 % of the time if I’m strict the other 80%.
It is common to serve Gumbo with rice, and a fresh loaf of french baguette goes great with the dish too. If you’re trying to lose weight like I am, then you better off avoiding the rice and bread with the meal. Believe me, it is filling enough and we even had leftovers enough for another dinner. This meal is more fatty so it fills me up more and I eat less, so I’m not worried about eating Gumbo when I’m trying to lose weight. Of course, I don’t eat it often.
We have made this dish so many times so we don’t even follow a recipe anymore.
This is a rough estimate on how much we added:
9 skinless chicken thighs with bones
8 Louisiana style hot links (you don’t need that many) We bought them ac CostCo.
2 red bell peppers
1 fairly large onion
6 garlic cloves
5 celery stalks
a bunch of green onions
parsley
1/2 cup of flour
1/2 of vegetable oil
Cajun spice blend
Gumbo file (spice)
Tabasco
1 quart chicken stock
1 quart of water
I usually cut the veggies while my husband fries the meat. We add spices to the chicken but not the sausage and brown all in a large cast iron frying pan. I cut the celery, bell peppers, onion, and garlic in really tiny pieces and mix together in a bowl and set aside.
My husband adds the vegetable oil to a large pot and heat it up, once warm he adds the flour and stirs until smooth and thickened. This is called the roux. After that I add the “holy trinity”, the bell peppers, celery, and onions to the pot with the roux while my husband stirs frequently. We add the chicken stock and the meat and once everything is in the pot we add the water. At this time we check the flavor and add in the Cajun spices. Our family likes it spicy so we are generous with the spices.
We bring it to a boil and reduce to simmer for about an hour. There will be a lot of fat and we spoon off as much fat as possible from the surface while it simmer.
We chop the green parts from the green onion and add to the Gumbo 10 minutes before it is finished. Cut parsley is added once it is done..
We don’t measure how much of the spices we use so you have to try and see how much you like.
We found this recipe online when we lived in Europe years ago so I don’t remember where we found it. You can look for recipes with seafood if you like that, we haven’t tried that yet. We are kind of boring, once we like something we stick with it.
Perhaps you have a favorite Gumbo recipe? I would love to hear how you make Gumbo.
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